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Weekly Report - 19 January 2012 (WR-12-03)

Funes seizes the moment and brings El Salvador to turning point

Every now and then a political speech meets and transcends public expectations and defines a political career. President Mauricio Funes delivered one such speech in El Salvador on 16 January. When Funes appeared in the village of El Mozote, the scene of the worst military massacre during the country’s brutal civil war (1980-1992), he rose to the occasion. He marked the 20^th anniversary of the signing of the peace accords that ended the civil war not just by apologising on behalf of the State but by going much further: he savaged the silence of his predecessors; issued an order to the armed forces to cease its veneration of controversial war “heroes”; and called for the amnesty law shielding those accused of human rights abuses during the civil war from prosecution, to be struck down.

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